Keeping your phone healthy isn’t just about the battery anymore, and, as it turns out, Google is working on a new feature that will help you see the bigger picture. According to new information found in a
commit for the Android Open Source Project,
Android 15 will include a way to let you see how healthy your phone’s storage is. This is similar to how some phones already show battery health, but for your storage instead.The commit was found and reported by
Android Authority earlier this week, bringing to light a new API being added to the operating system devoted to storage health. Right now, there’s no way to easily tell how much wear and tear your phone’s storage is under, which can be a concern. This is because storage chips can eventually wear out over time, just like any other hardware component. But with
Android 15, you’ll be able to see a percentage that indicates how much life is left in your storage chip.
This feature is based on information from the storage chip itself. Most modern phones use a type of storage called UFS (Universal Flash Storage) that have built-in indicators of how much use they’ve had.
Android 15 will be able to access this information and translate it into a percentage that you can easily understand.
Storage Health is most definitely still under development, and it may not be available on all phones that run Android 15. However, Google’s Pixel phones are likely to be among the first to support it. Once available, it should give you a much better idea of how long your phone’s storage will last before it starts to wear out.
So, how important is this new feature? Well, for most people, it probably won’t be a game-changer. But it can still be useful information to have. If you see that your storage health is starting to decline, it might be a sign that it’s time to start thinking about upgrading your phone. Or, you may want to take steps to back up your data more frequently. Additionally, this may become a significant metric to keep track of when buying or selling a smartphone, just how battery health has become for iPhone devices.
